At KHS, a great deal of a senior’s final semester grade is based on the senior presentation.

The senior presentation is a graded project in which seniors talk about themselves in front of teachers, parents, and classmates. The presentation includes essays seniors are required to write, and information about what they hope to achieve in the upcoming years.

About two weeks of the seniors final semester is spent working on PowerPoint, putting together about a 10-minute presentation that determines their final English grade.

Starting at the beginning of the year, seniors begin to work on these essays that they will need to include in the presentation.

A few essays that are included are the best book, college application, complex thinker, reflective, passionate individual, day-on- the-job, and the career research.

While I believe that a few of these essays are beneficial, I also believe that the rest are a waste of time. Writing an essay about a favorite book does not prove that a student can read or write.

Writing essays can give students an opportunity to better their writing, but only if they are being given sincere critiques. When students are in their writing workshops and are supposed to help give feedback to help the original author, many students put little effort into helping the author.

I have witnessed that students will wait until the night before the final due date to finish up the paper. This means that the paper has yet to be peer-edited for corrections, taking away from the learning process of writing, and making the peer-editing groups pointless.

The seniors are given six class days to work on this presentation, which determines almost their entire final marking period’s English grade.

If such a large project is required, students should at least get more then a week and a day to work on the actual project, in class, before presenting it to their parents, classmates, and teacher.

This wastes the seniors time that could be spent on actually practicing college reading and writing levels that the student will actually need. After high school ends, there will be no application to the real world.

Students should spend their time working to improve their writing to be ready for college and reading books that challenge them.